From what I can gather, this is the second year of the International E-Sports Festival, co-sponsored by China and South Korea. This year’s competition will be held in Wuhan, China on 10 Oct 2008. The screen shot above was posted at ief.com.cn/, which is billed as the official Chinese website of the 2008 International E-Sports Festival. The site now looks like this:

A little background on the games:

Planning for IEF was started in 2003 at the express request of China’s central government with the aim of providing positive, culturally appropriate Internet alternatives for Chinese youth. The government decided to pursue these objectives through the China Youth League, one of the most influential organizations in China. Many of China’s leaders, including President Hu, come from its ranks.

In November 2003, ‘e-sports’ was added as China’s ninety-ninth official sport by the Sports Bureau of the PRC’s Central Committee in order to add further importance to the objectives of the IEF. The organizing committee was formed to develop and implement initiatives to respond to the CPC’s constructive vision. Since then, the Committee has successfully developed and staged numerous very popular events under the banner of the IEF.

In January 2007 President Hu Jintao noted the success of IEF and issued policies designed to ensure the continuing development of culturally appropriate content and inculcating within China’s Internet community a culture of positive and innovative attitudes. In April 2007, the Central People’s Committee Political Bureau reinforced this policy by emphasizing the importance of developing a social-network model of Internet use by China’s youth.

Several reports coming out of China are suggesting the attack was carried out because South Korean committee organizers cancelled a promise to open a Japanese area. Furthermore, the hacker appeared to be…wait for it… Japanese. Yeah, the “Turkish hacker Firtina Bozo was here..!!” seems to have been lost on them. That one Hotmail address with a .jp tag must have blinded them to all other things contained in the message.

Just for fun I decided to see if there were other hacks by Firtina Bozo and let me tell you that is one busy individual.